Cops & Rubbers

Open Society Foundations’ Sexual Health and Rights Project (SHARP) commissioned Cops and Rubbers as an advocacy game to accompany their 2012 report Criminalizing Condoms. Players take on the role of sex workers and experience the negative consequence of the condoms as evidence policy including harassment and abuse by law enforcement.

The game is based on research conducted by SHARP partners in Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Russia, and USA and includes quotes from actual sex workers in this country who have suffered violations to their public health rights and human rights because of this policy.

In countries around the world police carry out legal and illegal searches of sex workers and confiscate or destroy condoms found in their possession. In many cases, possession of condoms has been used by prosecutors as evidence of prostitution. Treating condoms as contraband forces sex workers to choose between safeguarding their health and avoiding police harassment or arrest. Cops and Rubbers is an interactive demonstration of these policing practices and highlights the consequences on sex workers’ lives, including their vulnerability to HIV infection.

In Spring 2016, Cops and Rubbers was translated to a single-player online game and is available now at: copsandrubbers.com

September 2012: Rachel Thomas from OSF and I were interviewed at the International AIDS Conference (IAC2012) by Ejay de Wit, a Dutch reporter, for Hivnieuws, about the criminalization of condoms issue, OSF’s Criminalizing Condoms report, OSF’s “Condom Police” presence at the IAC, and the Cops & Rubbers game. If you can read Dutch, you can download the article here.

All visual designs created by Lien Tran with help on the following vector icons: